Once upon a time and not so long ago, blogs looked like blogs and websites looked like websites. One could easily tell them apart.
Then WordPress came along and changed all this. Now, it’s getting harder to tell blogs and websites apart. Not so much in terms of what the sites are being used for, but in terms of website design and also being able to tell what’s “under the hood”.
(Can You Tell Which Application Is Powering Your Website?)
For website owners, understanding the difference between a CMS application like WordPress and other website-building tools is huge, not so much in terms of the technical differences, but more importantly, regarding the areas that many website owners are concerned with, such as web development costs, ease of use, ability to maintain the website up-to-date, managing content, etc.
Think about this …
Which of the following options would you choose?
A) An eye-catching, professional-looking website that turns out to be quite expensive to build, or
B) The same eye-catching, professional-looking website, but at a much cheaper price than the cost of getting site ”A”.
If you picked website “B”, then you need to learn more about WordPress, why WordPress can give you an expensive-looking website that could end up costing you far less to build than websites which are built using a web development application … and how to tell the two apart!
WordPress is the world’s leading online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a budget-friendly CMS application suitable for most types of business applications.
Whether your reason for having a digital presence is for personal blogging or business use, WordPress is easy enough for a novice with no web design skills to use, and offers many helpful tools that make your web site extremely effective when it comes to getting your content published, promoting visitor interaction, generating business leads and sales, scalability, etc.
With almost one in every five websites around the world currently being powered by WordPress, chances are that if you already own a website, yours is also a WordPress site.
And if you don’t have a website yet, or are considering getting a website built, then wouldn’t it be great to be able to show your web developer an existing site with the design and layout that you like, know that it was built with WordPress and that you can, therefore, get something similarly built for your business quite inexpensively?
Is It A WordPress Site?
Do you need to know if a website uses WordPress? Maybe you’ve come to our site because you’ve heard or read about all of the great benefits of using WordPress, and you’re now wondering if your site runs on WordPress, or some other content management system.
Also, have you ever looked at a competitor’s website and wondered what they’re doing to try and get better results online?
Knowing if your competitor’s site is built with WordPress can tell you a few things about their strategies and methods, such as what themes or plugins they are using.
Here are a number of ways to tell if a web site has been built using WordPress:
Search Your Page Source Code
If you know how to view the source code of a web page (e.g. Firefox Menu > Web Developer > Page Source if using Firefox, or Google Menu > More Tools > View Source if using Google Chrome), you can look for obvious telltale footprints …
(Viewing your web page source code in Firefox)
Let’s say that you are surfing the web and you visit a web site that you like, and you’re wondering if the site uses WordPress …
First, bring up the site’s source code on your screen, using the methods described above.
In the source code, search for words like “wp-content” either manually …
Or use the browser’s “Find” function …
(Use Firefox’s ‘Find’ function)
This will quickly tell you if the site runs on WordPress or not.
Note: If you cannot find “wp-content” in the source code, it doesn’t mean that this is not a WordPress site.
There are other ways to tell if the site runs on the WordPress software, as we will soon be discussing.
As the point of this article is to try and help non “techies”, however, we have listed below a number of easier methods you can use to check if your site is built using WordPress other than looking at the source code.
Ask Your Web Developer
While this may seem like the most logical thing to do, many web developers, for whatever reason, may build clients a website and not tell them it’s been built with WordPress.
If you hired a website developer or got somebody else to build your website, just ask your webmaster or whoever built your website if your website has been built with WordPress.
That was easy, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t reach your website developer, or what if you’ve come across a website that you really like while surfing the net late at night and you really need to know if the site was built using WordPress?
Check Below The Footer
If the site uses a WP theme and the template has not been customized, you can often find a “Proudly powered by WordPress” message showing at the bottom of the site …
(Powered by WordPress)
If the simple methods above haven’t helped you, here are some other ways of identifying WordPress sites …
Online Tools That Tell You If A Website Uses WordPress
Here are a couple of sites that can tell you if a particular website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
Is It WP
(Is It WordPress?)
Is It WP? is a free online tool that can tell you very quickly if a website uses WordPress or not.
Using this tool is really easy. Just enter the address of the site into the search field and click the button.
It will then go through the URL pages and tell you if the site was built using WordPress, and if so, which version of WordPress it is currently using …
If the web site was not built using WordPress, you will see a message similar to the one shown in the screen shot below …
To visit this site, go here:
Advanced WP Theme Checker by Satori
(WordPress Theme Detector)
WordPress Theme Detector by Satori Studio is a free tool that can help determine whether or not a website uses WordPress as its CMS engine; it will also tell you which theme the site is using and provide a link to the theme’s official page.
To use this tool, paste the URL of a web page (it doesn’t have to be the home page) into the ‘Enter website URL’ field and click on the ‘What WordPress theme is that?’ button …
(Enter website URL and click the button)
The Detector will automatically scan the website and output its theme information …
(WordPress Theme Detector displays theme results)
If a website is built with WordPress but the theme is too customized to contain any traces of its origins, the Detector will still let you know it’s a WP site by outputting a message on the right.
(Modified WordPress theme message)
If the website is not using WordPress at all, the tool will also let you know …
(This website is not WordPress)
You can try the Detector yourself by visiting this link:
Wappalyzer.com
(Wappalyzer)
If you browse the net using either the Firefox or Chrome browsers and want to be able to tell if the sites that you are visiting are powered by WordPress, then Wappalyzer is a great add-on for your web browser.
Wappalyzer tells you what software is installed in the sites while you are browsing.
According to their website …
“Wappalyzer is a browser extension that uncovers the technologies used on websites. It detects content management systems, eCommerce platforms, web servers, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools and many more.”
Wappalyzer is also easy to install.
Once you have installed Wappalyzer on your web browser, icons will display in your browser menu identifying which software is installed on all the sites you are visiting …
If you see the WordPress icon on the browser menu (as shown in the screenshot above), then the site uses WordPress.
(This website has been built with WordPress!)
Go here to visit the Wappalyzer add-on website:
SpyBar
(SpyBar – Browser Addon For WordPress)
SpyBar is a browser addon that lets you ‘reverse engineer’ any WordPress site you visit and see which WordPress plugins and themes are being used, right inside your web browser …
(SpyBar – Discover WordPress Plugins And Themes Used By Your Competitors)
SpyBar can be installed as a browser extension on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and is compatible with PC and Mac.
To download or learn more about SpyBar, visit the site below:
Plugin Sniper
(Plugin Sniper – Find out what plugins a WordPress site is using)
Plugin Sniper lets you find out what plugins a WordPress site is using. This is a useful tool if you want to know what WordPress plugins are being used by your competitors.
Plugin Sniper is also a useful tool for researching what kinds of plugins businesses in certain niches are using …
(Search WordPress sites by categories and location)
To download or learn more about Plugin Sniper, go here:
We hope that you have found the above the information in this tutorial useful.
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie